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FOUR hackers were jailed yesterday for snatching more than 100,000 yuan (US$14,179) from online bank accounts by stealing account codes using a computer virus.
The Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Yu Li, Zhang Wei and Chen Feng to between six and a half years to eight years in prison for larceny and fined them from 40,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan.
Zhao Gang, who helped them draw money out of the automatic teller machine, was given a sentence of two and a half years in prison for hiding illegal income.
Yu, Zhang and Chen met each other on the Internet and became good friends two years ago, the court was told.
Though they had decent jobs and stable income, the young men all wanted to get more money. They began to discuss stealing money from others' online bank accounts by spreading viruses on the Internet in early 2007.
According to the court, Zhang first used Trojan viruses to intrude a Shenzhen's information Website in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, and seize the account number and trade code of some users entering the Website.
Yu then used a laptop they bought together to log onto the accounts, targeting accounts with a great deal of money.
He transferred the money to his own online account. Yu, Chen and Zhao then drew money out of Yu's accounts using ATMs in different areas.
The gang stole a total of 127,800 yuan from the accounts of three victims in just over a month from April 2007, the court said.
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